Manuel Noriega

you know, rising through the ranks and becoming like the leader that Panama needed.

Somebody who put Panamanian interests first, right?

Which is the tale as old as time.

Like you hear about dictators and their regimes rising up through the dust.

It's like they start talking about like self-sufficiency.

They talk about like nationalism, like...

Total military strong man.

You know, and I'll sort of jump into that history a bit.

Like he was hand selected by the CIA in the 1950s from his military school.

It was called the.

Torreos Military School in Peru.

And he was like hand-selected.

It was there he met this guy, Richard Helms, who ultimately became the director of the CIA in the early 1970s.

He was the director of the CIA during Watergate.

But him and Noriega were like boys.

They were very good friends.

And Noriega made it a point to become good friends with all of the directors of the CIA.

He did them favors and

You know, if they needed... I like to say, like, if... He endeared himself to them.

Exactly.